Martin and I had a pleasant chat a few weeks ago, and I'm glad he found something worthwhile to write about in my ramblings!

I do want to make clear that I loved my years teaching, and the actual teaching aspect of being a teacher was a fantastic experience that I miss to this day. It just turned out, in the long run, that there are many other aspects to the job that do not align well with my personality type, I guess.

You'll get no argument from me about the relation between physics and EE, @Garcia-Lasheras. It's allowed me to skate a bit on some of my lower level courses, in fact, and I was able to get quite respectable grades in my ME requirements with no more studying beyond brief refreshers (shh, don't tell them that). Acknowledging I paint with too broad a brush in saying so, I tend to view engineering as applied science and science as applied math.

I'm not sure if your post indicates you're headed toward teaching with your physics degree, @Garcia-Lasheras, but if you are, I wish you the best of luck. It can be an immensely rewarding career.

I suppose if you love teaching something enough, it might suggest that you should be in the field of afctually doing that very thing. Sometimes it works the oposite way, where someone who enjoys relaying information at their job--say an engineeer who enjoys explaining concepts to team members--really belongs in the classroom because their passion is for the art of explaining and reasoning out. But in this case teaching is a good entry point for someone who clearly posesses a wide array of interests and abilities.

In conjunction with unveiling of EE Times’ Silicon 60 list, journalist & Silicon 60 researcher Peter Clarke hosts a conversation on startups in the electronics industry. One of Silicon Valley's great contributions to the world has been the demonstration of how the application of entrepreneurship and venture capital to electronics and semiconductor hardware can create wealth with developments in semiconductors, displays, design automation, MEMS and across the breadth of hardware developments. But in recent years concerns have been raised that traditional venture capital has turned its back on hardware-related startups in favor of software and Internet applications and services. Panelists from incubators join Peter Clarke in debate.